Waiting
by bowtruckles
Summary: Hermione's not quite ready for her first time with Ron... or is she? Lots of fluff, little bit of smut. Rated M for Ron's language and because these two can't keep their hands off each other. Complete!
1. The Promise

_A/N: This has seven chapters total and I'm going to try to post one per week so we'll see how that goes! This isn't meant to be great literature, just something fluffy and sweet and entertaining (and maybe funny?). I hope you enjoy it!_

 _Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of these characters and I'm not making any money from this._

Chapter 1 - The Promise

There was no such thing as privacy at the Burrow; it was the sort of house where if the inhabitants wouldn't rat you out for trying to steal five minutes alone, the house itself would. The floorboards creaked, the hinges on the doors squeaked, and the walls were paper thin. Molly Weasley, additionally, had a rather inconvenient habit of barging into her children's rooms under the guise of bringing clean laundry or offering snacks, but we all knew she wanted to make sure everybody was fully clothed at all times. And so, being eighteen and newly in love and with a fresh lease on life, Ron and I found ourselves going on quite a few 'picnics' that summer. In the most technical definition of the term, they were picnics. There would always be a blanket and a basket filled with food and we would traipse to the far end of his family's Quidditch pitch and set ourselves up a little place to spend the afternoon. It was just that drinking pumpkin juice in the sunlight wasn't exactly what motivated us.

"Did you put on sun potion?" I asked, observing the redness on the back on Ron's neck. We'd finished lunch a while ago and were casually snacking on grapes, watching the skies to make sure Harry and Ginny didn't fly over us.

"I did, I'm just ginger," he replied. "Summers are not very kind to me, I'm not like you. You get a nice tan and you can wear your little skirts and look all sexy and I'm just… red and sweaty."

"I brought some with me, I think you need more," I determined as I fished out the jar in my beaded bag. "Come here."

Ron scooted across the blanket and I knelt behind him, rubbing the cream over the back of his neck. For good measure, I slipped my fingers under the collar of his shirt to ensure that no sliver of skin was left unprotected when he suddenly grasped the fabric and yanked the thing from his torso.

"It's just hot out," he explained, and I had to agree that the temperature had risen by a few degrees at the sight of all of that bare skin. Of course I'd seen him without his shirt before, swimming in the pond, and you can't live in a tent with someone for months without seeing them in various states of undress, but it still sort of made my breath hitch in my throat.

"That's fine." I kissed his cheek and smoothed more sun potion over his shoulders and back, shamelessly feeling his muscles as I went.

"You should probably do my front, too," Ron grinned, rotating to face me.

"Definitely," I agreed, because even though the whole thing felt like the opening to a tacky pornographic film, I wasn't going to miss out on this chance. My hands were just running down his chest, which was starting to fill out after months of malnutrition, when he leaned forward and caught my lips with his.

The jar of sun potion was forgotten as I tipped onto my back, pulling him on top of me. The gray vest top I wore inched up my torso just enough that a tiny stripe of the skin on my stomach was pressed against his. They always ended up like this, the picnics, with some heated snogging before we would try to regain our composure and return to his house with tousled hair and swollen lips. It was just our only way to spend any quality time alone together without the risk of his parents interrupting us and we had to take advantage of every second. In less than four weeks, after all, I'd be returning to Hogwarts and opportunities to even see Ron would be slim to none.

So I had to appreciate the moment while it was happening, his weight pressing me into the blanket and his lips, sweet and sticky from the grapes, pressing against mine over and over again, our tongues tangling.

"I wasn't done," I whispered between kisses, my hands on his shoulders. "You're going to burn."

"Worth it," he smiled back, descending on me again and skimming a hand up my torso. "Hermione," he breathed as I bent one knee so that my floral skirt fell up my thigh. "I love you."

"I love you too."

His hand was on my breast now, cupping it softly through the fabric of my top, as his kisses grew ever more passionate. He was starting to worry about it too, my impending departure for the Scottish Highlands. I always knew he loved me, but he'd been telling me more and more lately and doing things like stealing kisses when he thought nobody was looking and holding my hand under the table. There were exactly twenty-four days until I left and I felt determined to savor each and every one of them.

I raked my fingers through his hair, finding it damp with sweat, as his hips aligned perfectly with mine. Something long and firm dug into my thigh and against my better judgment I found myself grinding into him, arching my back so there was hardly an inch of us that wasn't flush together. Ron's hand ran up my thigh, disappearing beneath my skirt, and soon his fingers met with the cotton fabric of my knickers. Boldly they slipped underneath, his palm cradling my bare hip, before he curled his fingers around the material and began to draw them down.

"Wait, Ron," I gasped, sitting up a bit as he yanked his hand back like I had burned him. "We - we should stop."

"Right," he said quickly, shaking his head like a dog trying to clear its ears of water. "Yeah."

"It's not that I don't want to." I had thought about it countless times, what his touch would be like in more intimate regions of my body, and in that instant I was positively aching to feel him, but logic had to reign supreme. One of us had to keep a clear head and it likely wasn't going to be him. I sat up and adjusted my clothing back into place as he scrambled to his knees.

"Okay," he nodded with a bright red face. "It's fine, it's - yeah. I'm sorry."

"No, don't be sorry," I said. "I just think it'll make it so much more difficult when I leave, don't you?"

"I s'pose."

"I mean, if we start doing - that - I don't think we'll want to stop, will we?"

"What do you mean by 'that'?"

"Sex," I whispered even though nobody else was around.

"I wasn't trying to have sex with you just now," Ron rushed to say, "I just sort of wanted to - I mean, I don't get me wrong, I do want to, but-"

"So do I."

"But…" His fingers laced between mine. "But you just told me to stop."

"I just don't think we should do it right now since I'll be leaving so soon. I think it'll just make it much more difficult so I think…" I steeled myself. "I think we should wait until I'm done at Hogwarts."

"That's ten months away."

"I know but then we'll be able to be together all the time."

Ron blinked, then shrugged. "Okay."

"That's it?"

"Well, yeah, I'm not going to argue," he replied. "If you're not really ready then I don't want to - I mean, it's fine. Lately I'm just happy to be with you at all."

"Really?"

"Yes," he nodded, ducking his head forward to touch our lips lightly together. "I waited seven years for you already, what's one more?"

 _Thank you for reading! Please review!_


	2. Rubbish

**A/N: Thank you so much to all who have reviewed, followed, favorited - I truly appreciate it! I hope you enjoy this next installment.**

 **Disclaimer: You know the drill. I don't own this and I'm not making money off of it. This is just for fun.**

Chapter 2 - Rubbish

The morning after the Battle of Hogwarts was one of the worst in my life. Yes, Tom Riddle was dead, but so was Fred. So was Remus and Tonks and Colin Creevey and so many other students with whom we walked the castle halls for six years and even though our side had won, it felt like we had lost so much in the process. After Harry went to return the Elder Wand to Dumbledore's grave, Ron and I returned to Gryffindor tower to clean up. I showered and dressed in the only clean clothes I had, and then I had gone to find him. He was in the seventh year boys' dorm, sitting on the bed that was once his, staring up at the crimson curtains. When I went to hug him, he pulled me down onto the bed against his chest and for a long time we laid there together, silent, his fingers twirling a lock of my hair. At some point we did drift off, because I awoke a few hours later with my back against his chest and his arm tight around my waist. As I tried to move - I needed the loo - he just snuggled closer to me, burying his face in my hair, and mumbled something along the lines of "Er-my-nee" in my ear. And even as I was thinking that he was making rather a habit of saying my name in his sleep, I knew that waking up in his arms was one of the most brilliant things I had experienced in my eighteen years.

And so, against all my better judgment, I invited him - instructed him, really - to Apparate to my bedroom late in the evening on the thirty-first of August. "Just to sleep," I had explicitly stated to him, not that I needed to. We had been successfully sticking to the pact we had made a few weeks prior, not that it was always easy because our chances for alone time were rapidly dwindling and I felt like I needed to capitalize on every second with him, but we had been. Even now, as we sat across from each other on my bed, the kisses we exchanged were soft and slow and I could sense just how much willpower Ron was using.

"I'm leaving in eleven hours," I commented when his lips traveled down to my neck.

"I know, I don't want to think about it." Ron kissed down the column of my throat and then back up to connect our lips. "It's going to be weird knowing you're there and I'm not."

"You can still come back, I'm sure McGonagall-"

"You know I can't," Ron said softly, and I had to admit that he was right. It wasn't just that he and Harry were newly minted junior Aurors; he could never walk the castle halls without thinking of his fallen brother. "As much as I want to be with you…"

"I know," I nodded. "Then we just need to make tonight count."

"Oh?" Ron's eyebrows shot up toward his hairline.

"I know what you're thinking, but we can't."

"I wasn't actually thinking-" Ron began to explain before I chimed in again.

"The way I see it, it can go one of two ways," I told him, inching closer to him on the bed. "It could be rubbish."

"Why would it be rubbish?" Ron looked affronted by the implication.

"Neither of us knows what we're doing so the odds are that it's not going to be as perfect as we would want it to be, so then tomorrow when I leave, we'll be leaving on a bad note and I don't want that," I said, watching him process this. "And on the off-chance that it is amazing, then it'll make it so much harder to leave knowing what I'm going to be missing."

"Oh… kay," Ron said with a tone that suggested he was questioning my mental faculties. "That's fine, that's not why I came over here. I just want to spend time together before you go."

"So do I."

"Then come here," he grinned, tugging me closer to him and pressing his lips to mine. I sank into it, running my hands up his arms and over his shoulders. A low groan floated out of his throat as our tongues swirled around each other and I found myself crawling into his lap, a knee on either side of his legs.

Briefly, I allowed myself to entertain the notion of having sex with him, mainly because even sitting on top of him with our mouths glued together and his hands splayed on my back under my pajama top still wasn't as close as I wanted to be to him. I'd been thinking about it for years, truthfully, since I was about sixteen and my feelings for him shifted from 'I fancy my best friend but this will pass, definitely' to 'I am falling irretrievably in love with him'. It was a normal thing to want to do; after returning from Australia, my mother had pressed a packet of birth control pills into my palm and told me that she just wanted me to be safe. I hadn't started taking them yet, but there were charms we could do that would be even more effective in the event I changed my mind.

But all the reasons I had just listed out for him still stood. We couldn't head down that road only for me to board a train to Scotland the next morning; it wouldn't be fair to either of us. All we had to do was make it through the next few months and then we would have our whole lives ahead of us.

"Do you really think it'll be rubbish?" Ron asked after several minutes in which the only sound in the room was lips meeting and ragged breathing. His hands drifted down my sides, fingers dipping just barely into the waistband of the shorts I planned to sleep in.

"It might be," I said honestly. "It'll probably hurt and it might be awkward-"

"Well, yeah, with that kind of attitude."

"I'm just being realistic." Since he looked a bit dismayed, I dropped a kiss on his lips. "I'm sure eventually it'll be great, I just - I'm leaving _so_ soon."

"I'm not trying to change your mind," Ron said, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. "I know better than that. I just think that whenever you're ready and we decide to go for it, it's not going to be rubbish because…" He flushed a bright, burning scarlet. "It'll be with you."

It astounded almost everyone we knew that Ron, who had been loud and blunt and sarcastic and not always in touch with his own emotions for most of our friendship, could be so vulnerable and open with me. The first time Harry heard him tell me he loved me, he had sort of gawked and blinked at him for a full fifteen seconds. Nobody but me understood that this version of Ron was always there beneath the surface, just waiting for the right moment to emerge.

"I love you too," I said with a smile, leaning in for yet another kiss.

I woke up shortly after dawn to the sound of Ron's rasping snores, my head on his chest and his arms locked around me. He would have to Apparate home soon to maintain the illusion that he slept in his own bed, but surely we could exist like this for just a few minutes longer. It felt easy, natural to be waking up in his arms, somehow more intimate than all the times his hands had roamed under my clothing.

"Ron," I whispered, brushing his hair off his forehead. "Are you awake?"

"Mmm," he grunted, which I took as an affirmative response. Scooting up his body, I gently kissed him. He began to kiss me back, his lips impossibly warm and soft, and the ache in my chest at the thought of going weeks, months even, without kissing him like this, grew stronger and more stubborn. "No," he whined suddenly.

"What?"

"I don't want to go." His arms tightened around me, hugging our torsos together.

"I'll see you at King's Cross, right? You and Harry?"

"Yeah, of course."

We laid together for a few more minutes, exchanging languorous, lazy kisses and talking a bit, before Ron realized that if he wasn't home when his mother served breakfast, it would be a problem for all of us. I didn't feel as though we were doing anything wrong - we weren't even having sex, we just wanted to see each other - but his mum was especially conservative. It just helped, in these early months after the war, to wake up and know, because I could touch and see and hear him, that he was okay.

"I love you," Ron said after he had dressed, drawing me into a hug. "I'll see you at ten-thirty."

"I love you too."

He kissed the top of my head, then my cheek, and I snagged one more kiss on the lips before he located his wand and Disapparated back home.

Ginny and I were the only ones being seen off by our boyfriends and not our parents, which only served to underline how different we were from the typical Hogwarts student. With every step that the four of us took on Platform 9 3/4, intrigued gazes and whispered words followed us. Having been friends with Harry for years, I thought I would have been used to it by now, but most of the summer had been spent hiding out at the Burrow or in Muggle London and now I was remembering why. After stowing our trunks in a back compartment of the train, Ginny and I stepped back onto the platform to say our goodbyes.

Harry was first to hug me. "Behave yourself," he teased.

"Shouldn't be too difficult without you there," I quipped back. Hugging him was so different than hugging Ron, it always had been and it sort of stunned me, as Harry clapped me on the back like I was a Quidditch teammate, that Ron ever could have feared there was something more than friendship there.

Ron was taking the opportunity to give his little sister some unsolicited advice.

"Now, Ginny, as you're Quidditch captain," said Ron, "it's important that you don't get yourself suspended for using an illegal spell." He shot a glance at Harry, who rolled his eyes.

"I think I can manage," Ginny said. "Bye, Ron."

The siblings hugged, briefly, and then I found myself swept away behind a brick pillar, Ron's hands on my upper arms.

"It's going to be so strange without you there," I told him.

"Yeah, whose homework are you going to check over?"

"Oh, stop," I moaned, swatting him on the chest as he laughed. "I'm going to miss that."

"You're mental," he replied with such fondness in his voice that I stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

"I have to get on the train soon."

Immediately somber, Ron cupped my face in his hands and kissed me softly.

"I love you," said Ron. "See you in Hogsmeade."

"I love you too."

As the train roared to life, signaling its imminent departure, I kissed Ron one last time, finding it terribly difficult to break my lips from his.

"Hermione!" Ginny's voice sounded over the engines. "We've got to go."

The thought rolled through my mind that if I wanted to, I could stand here and snog Ron for the next six hours and then Apparate to Hogsmeade, but as Head Girl, I had prefects to manage.

"Bye," Ron whispered, kissing my forehead.

As Ginny and I arrived at our compartment and fell into easy conversation, I knew that Ron and I were doing the right thing in waiting. It already felt awful to leave knowing that I likely wouldn't see him until Halloween, and I couldn't imagine leaving if the relationship had progressed further than it already had. It just made more sense this way.

 _Thank you for reading! Please review :)_


	3. Pigwidgeon Post

**A/N: Hi everyone! Thanks so much for all of your responses on the last chapter, I appreciate it so much! I've decided to consolidate a few of the chapters so this thing should be five total, not seven, but they'll be a bit longer. So anyway, on with it!**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

* * *

Chapter 3 - Pigwidgeon Post

Between classes, Head Girl responsibilities, and supporting Ginny's Quidditch endeavors, the term raced by. I turned nineteen in September with very little fanfare, though I did receive a box of chocolates from Ron. They were delivered to me by an exhausted and yet gleeful Pigwidgeon, who I then had to nurse back to health before sending him back to Devon. Halloween in Hogsmeade was equally uneventful: the four of us spent most of our time drinking butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks and Ron and I only managed a few chaste kisses and a prolonged hug. Still, it was preferable to not seeing him at all; it made my heart skip when I saw his lopsided grin from down the street.

And suddenly it was Christmas Eve and Ginny and I were disembarking the Hogwarts Express at King's Cross station. Ron was waiting on the platform for us with Harry, all bundled up in a big coat and a scarf, flushed from the winter chill. I had two whole weeks with him ahead, I realized giddily as he enveloped me in a crushing hug.

"Hi," he whispered as I clung to him. "I missed you."

I would have stood there hugging him all day if not for Harry, who gave a slight tug on the back of Ron's coat. "Your parents are waiting for us," Harry reminded him, so Ron released me and we began to walk.

It felt good to hold his hand as we sought out a discreet place to Disapparate and it felt even better to look at him and plant a kiss on his cheek and know that I wouldn't have to say goodbye in a few short hours. It almost felt unreasonable how much I had missed him and how much I wanted - no, _needed_ \- some time alone with him. I still firmly believed that the decision we had made over the summer was the right one, but that didn't preclude me from wanting to kiss the living daylights out of him.

Within seconds we were at the Burrow, being greeted with enthusiastic hugs from every member of the Weasley family. The house was festive and full of cheer, just as I always imagined it would be. As Ron and Harry offered to take my and Ginny's trunks up to her room, she and I settled into the overstuffed sofa with mugs of tea.

"This is my first Christmas here," I realized as I took in the Christmas tree bearing a petrified gnome on top.

"How is that possible?"

"The last time I spent Christmas with your family, it was at Grimmauld Place."

"Oh, that's right! That feels like it was forever ago."

"It was a different lifetime."

I had been sixteen then, bailing on a family trip because Ron's dad was in the hospital and I knew he needed me more. Most of that holiday had been spent trying to decide if Ron was sending me a signal by giving me perfume as a gift or if he was just clueless about shopping for girls because it smelled so odd. It was strange to think he and I had ever been so awkward around each other.

Bounding down the spiral staircase, Ron squeezed onto the sofa beside me and kissed my temple.

"Midnight," he breathed into my ear. "Apparate to my room."

"What?"

"And don't be so obvious," he chuckled as he pressed his lips to mine. It was our first real kiss since I arrived at King's Cross so I leaned into it, letting my hand fall onto his thigh.

"Oi!" shouted a loud voice, and from the corner of my eye I saw George entering the room. "Don't make me hose you two down."

The night slipped by in a flurry of food and drinks and Ron beating his brothers at chess one by one (the quickest takedown being Harry) and so many biscuits and treacle tarts and cakes that by the end of it all, none of us could move. Charlie regaled us all with tales of dragon wrangling in Romania and I tried to explain how printers work to Mr. Weasley ("it writes on the parchment for you?") and Fleur whinged about all of the Celestina Warbeck music. I wouldn't have wanted to spend Christmas Eve any other way.

"The good news for you," said Ginny as we changed into pajamas in her room, "is that if we get caught somehow, my parents will blame everyone but you."

"I don't think they'll blame Harry. It'll be Ron's fault somehow."

"Yeah, probably." Ginny shrugged and sat down on her bed. "It was his idea anyway."

"His idea to have you and Harry spend the night together?"

"Yeah, he must really love you."

I had half a mind to simply ask Ginny if she and Harry were sleeping together in every sense of the word, since she wasn't the sort to embarrass easily, but I almost didn't want to know. It wasn't going to change any of my life decisions, after all.

At the very stroke of midnight, I turned on the spot and landed neatly in the middle of Ron's bedroom. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed talking to Harry, who was sprawled upon his small camp bed. My arrival was Harry's cue to leave, so he gave us a little wave and then vanished.

Ron beckoned to me. "Come lay down," he said, and I wasted no time crawling onto the bed as he shifted onto his back. I hadn't laid like this with him since the morning that I left, but it felt like no time had passed as I rested my head on his shoulder. All was silent save for the occasional bump of the ghoul overhead and the creaking of the settling house. Ron picked up a lock of my hair and twisted it around his pointer finger.

"I'm really glad you're here," he said.

"Where else would I be?"

"I don't know, but we don't have the greatest track record when it comes to holidays, so… I'm just glad it's going to be a good one this year."

"It won't be hard to top last year," I remarked before instantly cringing. "Oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that, it wasn't fair."

"I'm the one who's sorry," he replied. "I should have listened to you and not the locket, but I - Hermione, I promise I'm going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you."

"I forgave you a long time ago." As if to prove it, I linked my fingers through his atop his chest. "I know that wasn't really you."

"I still wish I could undo it. Actually…" He brought our hands up to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. "I wish I could undo a lot of things about us. Oh," he said with a start. "I don't mean these past, what's it been, eight months? That's been amazing. Just all the shit before that."

"Right, I sort of thought so." Inching up his chest, I touched my lips to his. "I love you so much, Ron."

"I love you too."

He connected our lips again, humming into my mouth as I rolled into my back and pulled him on top of me. In no time the kisses grew intense and almost frenzied, four months of separation all coming to a head at once. My head felt like it was spinning and I couldn't keep track of his hands; one second they were tangled in my hair and the next they were sliding up my stomach and shoving my shirt under my armpits.

"Is the door locked?" I asked breathlessly. It was one thing for someone to barge in when we were lying around and talking, and quite another when he was pinning me to the mattress and toying with my bra.

"Erm-" He snagged his wand from the bedside table and fired a nonverbal spell at the door. "It is now."

That was when my shirt hit the floor and I realized that I was wearing the least charming bra I owned - a cotton, flesh-colored one - but I didn't even really care. All I could think about was him and the way he was sliding one strap over my shoulder and replacing it with his mouth. His hips ground into mine as I pulled his shirt toward his head.

"Take this off," I instructed. Ron rose onto his knees and shed the garment, his lips then falling onto my collarbone and sucking on the sensitive skin.

It was becoming a problem, this heady, lust-driven moment, mainly because I didn't want to stop and yet I knew that I should. All I wanted was to be as close to him as possible, to crawl into his skin if that were a viable option, but the best I could do was shifting underneath him so that my knees were on either side of his hips. As I moved, the solid length of him pressed directly into my center through the thin fabric of my pajama bottoms and it seemed to snap everything back into focus. It wouldn't be much longer before we both were stripped bare and as much as I wanted that, I had to keep a clear head.

"Wait," I gasped, sitting up and adjusting my bra back into place. "Wait, we can't."

"Right," Ron nodded, plunging a hand into his messy hair. "Yeah. Sorry."

"No, it was - I just don't think we should right now."

"I know, I just got a bit carried away." His chest was still heaving a bit. "But we can go to sleep if you want."

"I like talking to you," I told him as I retrieved my shirt from the floor and pulled it on. "It's not the same writing letters."

"I'm the worst at writing letters, aren't I?" Ron slipped under the blankets and held up a corner for me to join him.

"No, I like your letters. I just like talking to you more."

I curled up against his chest once more and rested a hand on his bare shoulder, tracing the scars from his Splinching all those months ago. At the time I had blamed myself for his injury - I was the one doing the Apparating - and he had blamed himself, but I knew now that it was no one's fault. We were all just trying to survive the best way we knew how, doing what we felt was right.

"It's weird sometimes," Ron said. "I'll want to tell you something and I realize that I can't just Apparate to see you or send a Patronus or something, I have to write it all out and send Pig and it becomes a whole thing. And it's always something little so it doesn't seem worth it to send Pig that far so I don't always do it."

"The same thing happens to me," I admitted. "Once I even started going up the stairs to the boys dorms before I remembered that you wouldn't be there."

"I'm glad you're at school because I know it's what you want. It's just weird because ever since we've met, we've never spent this much time apart… and I'm not used to it."

"Me either." I kissed the underside of his jaw, which had developed a smattering of copper stubble. "I really don't want to lose you."

"You won't," he said fiercely. "Why would you think that?"

"Things are just so - everything seems so natural and easy for us right now and I don't want to lose that just because we're apart."

"I promise you, that will never, ever happen."

* * *

 _10 January 1999_

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _Harry and I went on the craziest mission today. We knew there was this bloke in Yorkshire who was hoarding some magical creatures so we had to go bust him, but he had so. much. stuff. Occamy eggs, nifflers that were all in little cages because they kept trying to steal the Occamy eggs because they're pure silver, a murtlap, and then he had, and I'm not joking, fifty unhatched dragon eggs. Please don't tell Hagrid. They're all being sent to live in a colony in the Ukraine - Charlie and his crew didn't have room for them. But seriously, fifty dragon eggs! So we had to get the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures involved and they're all over it. The head of the department asked me and Harry about you, I reckon word of SPEW has traveled._

 _Anyway, we talked about how we need to make sure to tell each other the little things that occur to us, so I've been writing them down as they happen and I have made a list which is as follows:_

 _\- second year, when you were in the hospital wing, I stole Harry's cloak and went to see you. I never told you because I didn't notice the piece of paper in your hand and if I had, we might have solved the whole 'basilisk in the plumbing' thing a lot faster._

 _\- next time you're here, I'm taking you to the cinema. I know I've never been but I think it's time we changed that. Plus I hear it's a popular Muggle date._

 _\- Harry and I got bored the other day (we are useless saps without girlfriends, I am amazed Kingsley hasn't fired us, it's pathetic) and so we baked cupcakes. They were really good._

 _\- our attempt at bacon sandwiches did not go as well. It was a big waste of bacon. Bacon burns faster than I thought._

 _\- my dad would like me to ask you about microwaves and why they're so much faster at cooking when they're smaller than ovens._

 _And in other, more interesting news, Harry has been fixing up Grimmauld Place. We burned the house elf heads and the Black family tapestry and it turns out that the portrait of Sirius's mum was easy enough to remove, all you had to do was take a sledgehammer to the wall. So anyway, he's kind of redesigning the whole place and he's planning to move in there sometime around the spring. He said I could live with him if I want. Thoughts?_

 _George was talking about reopening the store the other day. At one point he and Fred had prepaid the lease on the shop premises so it's just there waiting for him but I don't blame him for not being sure. It was their thing, I don't know if I can even picture the place without both of them. And I don't know who else would work there with him, it's not going to be Percy, will it?_

 _Wait! I've totally buried the lead. This is why I'm so rubbish at letters. Harry's been booked to do some sort of talk at Hogwarts for the anniversary of the battle so… I don't know if I'm going to go though. It's weird enough just going to Hogsmeade and being able to see the castle and I just don't think I can go inside. I'm sorry, I hope you're not disappointed by that but thinking about being there makes me feel a little sick. I don't know how Ginny does it._

 _I don't really know what else to say. I miss you so much even though it's only been a few days since I saw you last. I hope that classes are going okay and you're remembering to do things like, you know, eat and sleep and stuff. You're so brilliant but it's okay to take a second to relax, write to your boyfriend, that sort of thing._

 _Hopefully Pig gets this to you pretty fast, I think he's glad to have a trip to make again._

 _I love you so much. You are everything to me._

 _Love,_

 _Ron_

* * *

 _11 January 1999_

 _Dear Ron,_

 _That is terrible about your mission! I can't believe someone would keep all of those creatures locked up like that. I'm amazed word of S.P.E.W. has traveled but maybe with the support of that department, I can expand! And you can help if you want, Mr. 'We've Forgotten Someone!' Of course, only if you want, but I'm not going to try to free anyone against their will anymore, I just think that some fair wages and sick pay isn't too much to ask for. I've been doing some_ _research and talking to the elves here in the kitchen and they do become ill during the winter just like we do so it's not completely out of line to think they might need time off to recover._

 _You can tell your dad that microwaves and regular ovens use different forms of heat to cook food. I know that's only going to invite more questions but I'm not really an expert. Please keep telling me these little things though because I had no idea you snuck out to_ _see me that year and it's incredibly sweet and I love you even more for it. I also feel that if Madame Pomfrey didn't notice I was holding a bit of parchment, it's okay that you didn't._

 _We will absolutely go to the cinema! Remember though that you're not allowed to talk or ask questions like when we watch films at my house because other people get mad. I think you'd love it though, you can even pick the film._

 _If you want to move in with Harry, then you should! It might give us a bit more privacy for when I'm back from school, too. Though, it sounds like from your cooking adventures with Harry that you might be ordering a lot of takeaway. I know you were starting to go a bit mad this summer living at home, though, so it sounds like a nice change of pace. And I understand completely if you don't want to come to Hogwarts when Harry's here. Of course I would love to see you but I don't want you to feel like you have to do something that you'll be uncomfortable doing. We'll have plenty of other chances to see each other and before you know it, it'll be summer!_

 _Things here have been going really well so far. I've been busy but I promise I'm doing all of those things you want me to do - obviously I'm accomplishing the part about writing to my boyfriend. I do miss you though, so much. I miss kissing you, if I could Apparate directly out of here, I would go to your house, kiss you and then come back. Well, I might hang around for more than just one kiss, but you know what I mean. The other day I was thinking about our second kiss, the one in your dad's shed? I'm sure you haven't forgotten, it's just funny because I was so nervous and so scared that I was doing it all wrong. And maybe I was but you don't seem to mind. I used to keep count, did you know that? We kissed five times before we had our first real snogging session and after that, of course I lost count. But our second and third were both in the shed, then our fourth was that night outside Ginny's room, then the fifth was the next morning in the kitchen because we both woke up early, then you invited me to go on a walk and well, we both know we weren't just walking._

 _I truly hope nobody intercepts this before it gets to you, I've gone on about kissing for far longer than is healthy. I just miss you! I love you, I am in love with you, and it doesn't feel right not to see you every day. But I know it's not forever. Soon we'll be together all the time. School is great and I'm happy I'm here but I also can't wait for our lives to really start. You're already on your way there what with being an Auror and about to move out... and yesterday I stopped Peeves trapping people inside big bubbles of Drooble's. So things are different here._

 _Give your family my love and I'll see you in Hogsmeade!_

 _Love,_

 _Hermione_

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review :)


	4. If I Only Had The Nerve

**A/N: Thank you so much once again for all of your reviews! You guys are wonderful. This is the penultimate chapter of the story and I hope you like it!**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.**

* * *

"Ron…" But his lips just kept falling on mine, over and over, eagerly, playfully. "Ron…"

"Mmm," was his response as he landed a particularly noisy kiss. "You said you missed this, I'm just making up for lost time."

Indeed, it had been three months since we last saw each other thanks to a blizzard that shut down all of Hogsmeade over Valentine's Day weekend. He had wanted me to see the progress on Grimmauld Place while I was home for a long weekend over Easter, so I had Apparated directly there upon my return to London. Since my arrival on the doorstep, he had not stopped kissing me.

"Ron," I said again, though I was secretly enjoying it. "You're making a scene."

"There's no one here," he replied, now kissing my neck. "And I missed you."

"I missed you too." I wound my arms around his neck and caught his lips with mine. "Harry's not here?"

"Oh, no," sounded a familiar voice from the hallway. "Harry's here, and he'd like you both to get a room."

There was a blur of messy black hair as he strolled past us and down the stairs to the basement kitchen.

"Well, come on then," said Ron, releasing me but taking my hand. "I'll give you the grand tour."

I did spend a summer living here when it was headquarters for the Order, but somehow Harry and Ron had managed to eradicate some of the deep-seated creepiness in the house. The elimination of Mrs. Black's portrait certainly had helped, along with the disposal of the heads of dead house elves, but mostly it was an air of optimism that now lived between these walls. Sirius had been miserable living here, and the work of the Order had been so grave that not even the cheer of the twins could really permeate the somber mood of the place.

Now, of course, Harry had replaced all of the furniture and decorations and had given everything a fresh coat of paint, and it all felt new again. The main structure of the house had remained, and Sirius' bedroom was left intact as he had left it, but everything was brighter.

"This'll be my room," Ron said as we arrived on the top floor of the house, gesturing to the door on our left. He turned the knob to reveal a completely empty room. "I've got to get a bed, obviously."

I leaned against the door jamb. "It might help."

With a mock scowl, Ron stepped in front of me and dropped his forehead onto mine. "Let's go to the cinema tonight! Do you want to?"

His excitement was infectious; I angled my face up for another kiss. "Yes, if you do."

"Do we invite Harry or is it a date?"

"It's a date."

We ended up at the classic cinema theatre in Muggle London, because it was showing The Wizard of Oz and Ron felt he had to see a Muggle's perception of a magical person. We ordered huge tubs of popcorn and enormous soft drinks and found seats in the back, "just in case we get bored and want to snog instead" (his words).

But Ron did not get bored. He watched with one eyebrow crooked, an expression of confusion mixed with horror on his face for most of the film. It was more fun to watch him than anything else as he crunched popcorn and fought every urge that came over him to question the storyline or make a sarcastic remark. If we ever had kids, perhaps I would need to be the one taking them to see Disney films in the theaters. I couldn't imagine his reaction to their interpretation of mermaids.

"As a wizard, I'm offended," Ron proclaimed loudly as we stepped onto the street, causing a gaggle of teenage girls to stare at him and then burst into giggles.

" _Ron_!" I snapped. "Be quiet!"

"They thought I was joking," he brushed it off, though he lowered his voice. "Is that really what Muggles think about wizards?"

"It's just one story," I laughed, taking his hand. "You're not meant to take it personally."

"But how do you _not_? You're a witch and your skin isn't green - I've met evil witches and none of them are like that. And how come she melted?"

Laughing, I stopped in my tracks and used his hand to pull him down to me for a kiss.

"What was that for?" he asked, smiling a bit.

"Can't I just kiss you because I want to?"

"Course you can… come on," he said, pulling me into a darkened alley. "Let's go back to Grimmauld Place."

Harry wasn't there when we arrived - a note magically affixed to the cupboard informed us that he was out with Ginny - so we found ourselves lazing about in the drawing room, having scrounged up a bottle of white wine from the kitchen. It was a glimpse, really, of what life would be like once he truly lived here. There would be no need for using picnics as an excuse to snog or carefully orchestrated Apparition strategies with Harry and Ginny. We could just be together.

"But how did she get there?" Ron asked out of nowhere, clearly still baffled by the film. "Was it supposed to be a different planet? Because if they were still on Earth, then why didn't they have more magical protection on the place?"

"Are you regretting our decision to go to the cinema?"

"No! It was fun! I just have a lot of questions."

With a laugh, I sipped my wine and propped my bare feet up on his thigh.

"I don't think you're meant to overthink it."

"Yeah, probably not." Picking up my free hand, he dropped a kiss on the inside of my wrist. "I'm really glad you came back for the weekend, I know you have NEWTs-"

"I wanted to see you. And…" I swallowed thickly. "And I know it was Fred's birthday yesterday and I wanted to be sure you were okay."

"Right," he nodded. "Well, it was fine, I was mostly worried about George but he spent most of the day with my parents so I reckon it was alright."

"But are you alright?"

"Er, yeah," he said, not sounding totally convinced. "The way I look at it, it could have been so much worse."

"It's okay to not be okay."

"I know. But I also know that I have way more than I ever deserved so I'm not going to question things too much."

"Except the film we just watched."

"That film was _ridiculous_."

The wine glasses found their way to the end table, somehow, as Ron began to pepper kisses over my cheek and onto my lips. It all became sort of a blur; one second we were innocently kissing on the sofa and the next we were lying on the floor with my skirt bunched up around my waist and both our shirts discarded. I had never been this exposed in front of him before, save a few swims in the pond near the Burrow, but I didn't feel self-conscious the way I had anticipated. I knew he wasn't going to critique the birthmark shaped like a pear on my ribcage or the softness of my lower stomach. I knew he loved me just as I was, flaws and all.

This time when his hand made its way to my knickers and moved them down, I let it happen - I welcomed it, in fact, as his fingers slid over the heat between my legs. My breath caught in my throat as his lips fell on my neck.

"Is this okay?" he panted, his kisses sloppy on my skin. I managed to reply in the affirmative, gasping and angling my hips up as he slipped a finger inside. "Does it feel good?"

It did, it truly did, and I started to think that if his fingers felt this good, something else might feel even better. We could take that step, right now, even though we ran the risk of Harry coming home at any moment. It would even be symbolic, since this drawing room was where we had fallen asleep holding hands… but then what? I would have to go back to school on Monday knowing our relationship had just drastically changed, and where would that leave us?

So I did what I had been doing for the past several months every time I saw us approaching that shift: I pushed him away.

"Wait, hold on, stop," I blurted out, shimmying back into my knickers.

"Are you okay? Did I hurt you?" Ron asked frantically. "Love, I'm sorry-"

"No, I'm okay, we just really can't do this."

We both sat up, trying to drag ourselves back to reality, as Ron wiped his hand off on his trousers. Together we remained in a heavy, charged silence as I pulled my shirt over my head.

"Can I ask you something?" Ron said, more meekly than I had ever heard him. "Is… is it me? Do you just not want to have sex with me specifically?"

My heart plummeted into my stomach. Ron's self-esteem was already awful, though it was still better than in the early years of our friendship, and I was only making it worse.

"No, of course not," I rushed to tell him. "I love you and I do want to be with you like that."

"Okay." For the second time that night, he did not look convinced. "But then - okay, I'm not trying to pressure you into anything, I'll wait until we're thirty if you're not ready. It just sometimes seems like you are and I'm not sure what changes in the moment, do you think I'm going to hurt you?"

"I don't think that," I replied gently. "I know you would do everything you could not to."

"Yeah, I would." He looked down at the damp spot on his leg. "It's okay that you're not ready, I just sometimes get the sense you're… scared of me, maybe? And I really don't want you to be because I love you-"

"I'm not scared of you," I said, feeling uninvited tears spring to my eyes, "but I am scared."

"But why?"

Poor Ron. I knew he meant it when he said he'd never want to pressure me, but I also knew I was confusing the hell out of him. To him, it was simple. We loved each other and we trusted each other so it just made sense to be together in every sense of the word. I, however, had a bad habit of complicating things.

"I really love how our relationship is right now," I began in a halting voice. "I love that you hold my hand and you kiss me all the time and that we have fun no matter what we're doing and that we're still best friends - I'm so happy when I'm with you, I've never been happier in my life."

Ron reached out and wiped a tear from my cheek that I didn't even realize was there.

"So why are you crying?"

"I'm scared it'll change if we start… if we start having sex." I managed to raise my eyes to meet his. "I don't want it to be the only thing that we do or why we're together and I just feel like it's a big deal and it has the power to change everything and I don't want to lose what we have now-"

"We won't," Ron interrupted. "I would never-"

"I don't want to become one of those couples who has sex and then the rest of the time it's like they're strangers, that's like a nightmare to me."

"That's not why I'm in this," Ron stated firmly. "I'm not going to lie, it's something I think about all the time, I'm nineteen, I can't help it really." I gave a weak little laugh. "But that's not why I'm with you because if it was, I'd have done it two years ago with Lavender."

"But you didn't." I already knew that, but I still took comfort in it. He hadn't ever loved her, and it probably would have broken my heart a bit if he had been cavalier about that something that was hugely important to me.

"No, I didn't." He planted a kiss on my forehead. "I just don't think you should worry. I think when it does happen, it'll just be another thing to add to the list of good things about us."

"Really?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "And I'm sure whenever it happens, it'll be amazing, but I'm not going to rush you, I mean, if it's tonight or a year from now or on our wedding night-"

If this whole conversation had been taking place in a bad Muggle sitcom, that would have been the moment where the music scratched to a halt.

"Our wedding night?" I repeated, a bit in awe. "Do you think we'll get married?"

He shrugged as though I had asked what he wanted for dinner. "I don't see myself marrying anyone else."

Everyone thought I was so well-spoken and articulate and brilliant, but whenever it came to Ron, the words always came out wrong so rather than try to tell him what that statement meant to me, I just kissed him, long and deep. I had employed the same strategy when he had declared that we couldn't let any more house elves die for us, and eleven months later, we were still together, so on the whole, it was rather effective.

"I do want to," I assured him when we broke apart. "I want to be with you like that. I think I just need a little more time."

"Alright," he said. "I'm sorry if I went a little too far earlier."

"No, it was…" All the blood in my body rushed to my face. "It was nice, really nice, actually."

He smiled and pulled me into a hug, lying back so I rested against his bare chest. These were things I was terrified of losing, the little intimacies, his fingertips trailing up my arms and his beating heart in my ear. I didn't want any of it to fade once we took that final step.

"Merlin," Ron remarked into the quiet. "It's nice and all, laying like this, but I've really got to get a bed."

* * *

The Great Hall had been transformed into a small sort of theater, with rows of chairs replacing the four house tables and the staff table having turned into a small stage with a podium. All the first years sat in the front row, their feet swinging freely, and gradually the students grew older as the distance from the stage increased, which meant that Ginny, Luna and I sat in the very back with the rest of the seventh year students. The whole place was quite rowdy and filled with chatter; it was the third of May, and Harry Potter was in the building. As Head Girl I was meant to keep the students calm, but as I was well known as one of Harry's best friends, my presence only served to rile them up further.

The arrival of Headmistress McGonagall on the stage cast an instant hush over the crowd of students. She gave a few introductory words for Harry and then swept off the stage, allowing the guest of honor to tentatively step in front of the entire student body of Hogwarts. Several excited whispers broke out from a group of first year Gryffindors, but they were quickly silenced by a stern glare from McGonagall.

On stage, Harry looked oddly short and incredibly ordinary. He cast a quick spell at his own throat so that his voice would be magically amplified.

"Erm, hi everyone," he began, awkwardly approaching the podium. "My name is Harry Potter."

Next to me, Ginny snorted and buried her face in her robe-covered lap.

"He introduced himself!" she hissed as she fought back laughter. "Like we won't know who he is!"

"Shush!" I snapped back. It was classic Harry, actually, and it was oddly comforting.

"I was a student here for six years, I missed my seventh year for reasons that I'll go into later, and I'm now a junior Auror working for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

From corresponding with Ron and Harry over the past month, I knew that Harry had been preparing for this event for weeks. He never fancied himself one, but he was a good teacher; most students had learned more in Dumbledore's Army than they had over several years of fragmented, uneven Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons. The only time we ever received consistently high-quality instruction was from Lupin, whom I was sure Harry channeled in his instruction.

"He's doing great," I whispered to Ginny as Harry spoke about conjuring a Patronus.

"I know, shut up," she replied, having moved on from laughing at him to watching with pride alight in her eyes.

"Here's what I learned from all of this," Harry concluded, sitting down at the edge of the stage, "and you might have heard it all before but I'm going to say it again. Seeking power, seeking glory, it's a risky game. It can destroy people, it can be your downfall. Voldemort didn't understand things like friendship and love, he didn't even understand happiness. He didn't want to."

Where before the younger students had been chuckling at his jokes and asking him questions out of turn, which he didn't mind, they now listened with rapt attention.

"But those are the things that saved me. Without my friends, I know I'd be dead and this school would be a lot different. If my mother had not sacrificed her life for mine, if I hadn't tried to sacrifice mine for all of you, none of us would have had a chance and all of that was done out of love. Voldemort couldn't understand it and it's what brought him down. So what I'm saying is that power, success, status, go after it if you want, but don't lose sight of what's actually important.

"Love is what matters. It saved all of our lives. It brought my best friend back when we thought we lost him for good. You can't dismiss it or write it off, and if you have it, you had better hang onto it. I lost a lot of people during all of this and there's so much that I wish I had done and said while I had the chance. I reckon what I'm trying to tell you is not to take anything for granted. Don't write any of it off."

Ginny's eyes were wet; my jaw hung slack.

Harry was right. He was always right about things like this. All of the abuse and suffering and hardship and the weight of the world sitting on top of his shoulders since his infancy had not broken him and his heart had remained so pure. He knew what was really important because he had experienced it firsthand. And I, the so-called brightest witch of her age, the one who read as many books as she could get her hands on, the one who had thought that logic and knowledge could prevail over all, had been stupid for so long.

If I listened to Harry - and I knew that I should - then it was quite clear that what Ron and I shared was rare and special, the sort of thing that came along once in a lifetime if at all. I had to cherish it, protect it. What I wanted was him, all of him, and I no longer understood why I was waiting. I was taking everything for granted, thinking we had the next eighty years together, when the truth was that even in a Voldemort-free world, anything could happen. If I lost him somehow, I wouldn't want to look back on our relationship and think that I had missed out on something that could be amazing, that could bring us closer than we already were, because of some unfounded fears.

Ginny was still in the Great Hall with Harry and McGonagall, no doubt embroiled in a Quidditch-related discussion, when I dragged myself up to Gryffindor tower and up to the girls' dorm. Ignoring the chatter from my roommates about Harry, I drew the curtains and settled in with a roll of parchment and a quill.

 _3 May 1999_

 _Dear Ron,_

 _Harry just did his talk. He was brilliant! You'd have been very impressed, I think. Anyway, I've been thinking about everything I told you when I was home over Easter. You were really amazing about everything which only made me love you more, if that's even possible. But that's the thing. I love you. I want everything with you. I don't want to go through my life being controlled by fear. I didn't let it happen when we_ _were in school here or all last year when we lived in that tent and I won't let it happen now._

 _I trust you more than anyone so I believe you when you say that everything will be fine, it'll be the same, we'll still be us. I'm still a little scared. It's a big deal and I won't know what I'm doing - which is not a feeling I enjoy - but we'd be going through it together, right?_

 _Ron, I think I'm ready. No, I know I'm ready. NEWTs are in a month and when I get home after that, it's time. I don't want to miss out on anything more, not when it comes to you._

 _Love,_

 _Hermione_

* * *

 _Thank you for reading! Please leave a review :)_


	5. The Next Step

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Also, this chapter is the main reason this story is rated M...**

* * *

We picked the perfect night. Harry had taken Ginny out on some sort of fancy, romantic evening so they could celebrate her role as the newest Chaser on the Holyhead Harpies, and so Ron had Grimmauld Place, which was fully remodeled and therefore no longer creepy, all to himself. He had obtained furniture for himself between Easter weekend and my graduation from Hogwarts, including rather tasteful navy blue linens for his king-sized bed. They were, in my opinion at least, a welcome departure from the blinding orange of his room at the Burrow. I wouldn't have been surprised if the whole house had taken on a sort of fratty, stag-night vibe in the month or so since they had permanently moved in - they were eighteen and nineteen, after all - but they seemed to appreciate what they had with this house and were respecting it well. I'd only seen the completed product a few times since returning from Hogwarts, but now I was planning to spend the night.

And I was ready. I had purchased matching lacy undergarments at a Muggle shop, I had used my wand to tidy up any stray body hairs, I had even tried to tame my ridiculous hair. I wanted this night to be perfect in every way.

Ron laid a sweet, simple kiss on my lips when I stepped inside the house, draping a casual arm along my shoulders.

"Do you want anything to eat?" he offered, giving me a squeeze. "I can make you something, I'm actually getting halfway decent at cooking."

"No, I - I'm not hungry."

"Oh. Okay."

"Do you want to go upstairs?"

"Yeah," he agreed readily. "Definitely."

We ascended the steps, which still creaked a bit under our weight, and then headed to the bedroom on the left. Ron used magic to lock the door once we were inside.

"Are you expecting many visitors?" I teased, trying to keep my voice light.

"Well - in case they come back early or something."

He laced his fingers through mine and dipped his head to kiss me, taking a few steps toward his bed. _Relax_ , I told myself, trying to quell the quivering in my chest as his tongue snuck into my mouth. _You're just kissing Ron. You've done that hundreds of times_. All I had to do was pretend that we were just snogging like we had spent the past year doing, only this time we weren't going to stop things from escalating.

"Should we do the charms now?" Ron asked, his mouth still close to mine.

"Er… yes. Good idea."

Unbeknownst to him, I had actually spent some time practicing these contraceptive spells, so I performed the appropriate charms on each of us and then set my wand on his nightstand. Taking measures to prevent pregnancy seemed to drive home that this was really, truly happening, and my hands shook as I set them on his shoulders and leaned up to kiss him.

"You okay? You nervous?" He touched our lips together.

"A bit," I admitted sheepishly.

"It's just me," he said by way of reassurance. "And… I mean…" His face went pink. "I don't know what I'm doing either."

"Right."

"Come here," he said, mustering confidence as he sat on the bed and patted the comforter next to him. "Just kiss me for a little bit."

That I could do, so I joined him on the mattress and we fell into exchanging soft, comfortable kisses, pretending that this was all it was going to be. It worked, too, for a time, as we laid on our sides and he lightly caressed my cheek and shoulders. I had a sense that he needed this just as much as I did. If all we did that night was exactly this, I wouldn't have been too disappointed, and that was when I realized that even if our first time was an absolute disaster, it would still be me and Ron together and that was all I wanted. Bolstered by this, I tilted onto my back and used the collar of his shirt to pull him on top of me.

"Actually, let's just get rid of this," I said with a smile, tugging the shirt up to reveal his fair, freckled skin.

"Whatever you want, love."

It fell haphazardly to the floor as he grew more fervent in his affections, nibbling and sucking on my neck and working my own top over my head. The new bra I had chosen was a soft lilac, and Ron did a bit of a double-take on it before kissing over my collarbone. The jeans I wore felt tight and restrictive as I tried to situate myself more fully under him (in retrospect, it was stupid to wear them), so I reached down for the metal button below my navel.

"I'll do it," Ron said gently. I noticed his fingers trembled a bit too as he unhooked the button and drew down the zipper. Slowly but surely, the matching lilac knickers made an appearance as I worked myself out of my jeans. "Fuck," he groaned, unable to decide where to kiss me before ultimately choosing my lips. The buckle on his belt dug into my stomach, so I started to undo that as well.

"We need to get you caught up," I explained when the belt fell slack.

Grinning down at me, Ron shed his jeans and then pulled me on top of him, his hands roaming over every inch of skin he could reach. I had thought that the one thing about this that didn't make me nervous was being naked in front of him, but as he fiddled with the clasp on my bra, my heart began to race in my chest. It wasn't that I thought he'd have complaints, but it was all growing so intense so quickly. As my bra loosened around my shoulders, his hands slid down my back and under my knickers, wiggling the tiny scrap of lace down my hips. In mere seconds, I would be completely naked in front of a man for the very first time, and even though that man was Ron, it still made adrenaline pump through my veins. Between my legs, a subtle pulsing began to build.

"Fuck," he grumbled again, flipping me onto my back and whisking away my bra. I kicked away my knickers while his lips descended onto one of my nipples. He swirled his tongue over the tiny point, sending a jolt of electricity through my body. Part of me couldn't believe any of this was happening, that I was lying there completely naked and he was almost there and this was really, truly going to take place after so much anticipation and build-up.

"Ron," I gasped as he moved his lips to my other breast and made my legs wiggle around on the comforter. "I'm ready."

He nodded and in the next second his pants were gone and I was opening up my legs and he was right there, his tip touching the slick folds between my legs.

"I love you," he said, sloppily kissing me.

"I love you too."

With one motion of his hips, he thrust forward and… missed, sliding into the crease between my thigh and my hip. Before his face could turn fully beetroot I reached between us and guided him back into position. Inch by inch he pushed inside, teeth digging into the inside of his swollen lower lip as he stretched and filled me up. It stung a bit as my muscles adjusted to accommodate him, but there wasn't a searing pain like I had half-expected.

Ron's eyes, dark with desire, locked onto mine. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I nodded, wanting to kiss him but not sure if I should. "I'm - I'm fine."

He gave one thrust forward and then frowned, awkwardly adjusting the position of his forearms on either side of my head. He cringed on the next thrust and shifted around again, and since my vocal chords seemed to have ceased function I ran a hand down his back in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. The third positioning of his body atop mine seemed to be the charm and he began to move within me in earnest, sweat already causing his hair to cling to his forehead.

It wasn't until I almost said the word 'eleven' aloud that I realized I was counting his movements, just like I counted our first five kisses. _What is wrong with you?_! I berated myself. I was supposed to be living in the moment, savoring the fact that I was finally being intimate with Ron, who I loved more than anything on the entire planet, and instead I was counting things. The truth of it was that it didn't hurt anymore, but I wasn't experiencing fireworks, either. It just felt like what it was in the most technical sense: a large, cylindrical _something_ inside my body. My ears were filled with the sound of slapping skin and our ragged breaths and I didn't know what to do with my arms or my splayed-out legs and I still wanted to kiss him but held myself back. I wasn't completely sure what all the hype was even about.

Ron scooted up my body just the slightest bit, modifying the angle of our connection and sending faint waves of pleasure through my skin. Maybe I just needed some time to acclimate to this - it was all brand new, after all - because it was starting to actually feel good.

"Hermione," he moaned, moving a tad more quickly.

"Keep going," I said into his ear, pressing my fingertips into his shoulders.

A low grumble developed in his chest, vibrating against mine, and then suddenly his eyes squeezed shut and his hips bucked forcefully into me and he gave another grunt and then stilled, heavy breaths shaking his chest.

It was over. His weight was crushing me into the mattress as I ran my fingers down his sweaty back. He was still sunk deep inside me, but softening by the second.

"Ron, you're squishing me," I finally said.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" He rolled onto his back and rubbed his hands over his reddened face. "Sorry, I - are you alright?"

"Yes," I nodded, quite eager to use my wand to vanish the gooeyness between my legs. "I'm fine."

"You didn't get much out of that, did you?" he asked in a dreading tone.

"It started to feel good at the end." Grimacing, Ron covered his eyes with one hand. "And it stopped hurting right away."

"I'm glad it didn't hurt you," he mumbled. "I just want…" He peeked at me between his fingers. "I want you to feel what I did."

"It was our first time, I wasn't really expecting-"

"Hang on." Suddenly he looked determined, fetching my wand and casting a cleansing charm at the mess between my legs. "I have an idea."

He was already hard again when he covered my body with his, our lips meeting in the kiss I had been craving. Soon, however, his mouth traveled south, nipping at the silken skin on my breasts and then heading down to my navel. His kisses were feather-light, sending goosebumps all along my flesh as he touched his lips to my hipbone.

"Are you sure?" I asked him as he nudged my legs apart.

"Oh, yeah." His face maneuvered between my thighs. "Is it okay?"

I nodded, so he dove in, running his tongue up my center. _Never question this_ , I quickly determined. If I had thought his fingers felt good, it was nothing compared to his mouth. Any self-conscious worries I might have had melted away with each movement of his tongue. I knew I was making all sorts of noise as my self-control was abandoned in favor of the aching pleasure rushing through my body, but then his tongue found my small, swollen nub and I forgot where I was. I forgot that I was the type of person who hated to relinquish control, who loved order and logic and being sensible, and I let it take over. By the end, my legs were shaking and I was a trembling mess and Ron, looking rather accomplished, was wiping off his mouth with a corner of the bedsheet.

"Ron," I gasped, grabbing at his shoulder. "Let's try again."

"What?"

"I want you again." They were the type of words that were written in cheesy airport romance novels but they were also exactly what I was feeling. I needed to feel him inside of me once more.

Needing no more encouragement, Ron crawled up my body, taking a second to kiss each of my breasts and my neck. This time, I wrapped my legs around his waist as he plunged inside and instantly began to rock his hips with mine. A low hum of enjoyment bubbled out of my throat as I closed my eyes and let everything wash over me.

The awkwardness, the uncertainty, it was all gone now. There was only him, his skin, his breath, the scent of his hair in my nose. Without the stress of wondering if it was going to be horrible or if I would spend the night in pain, I was able to appreciate everything: his thick length sliding in and out, driving deeper every time, his bare chest pressed against my nipples. This had to be what everyone was on about, because it was brilliant, it was him, it was us.

"Ron, oh God," I sighed, clamping my legs around his sides.

"Is it good?" Could he not tell from the way I was clinging to him and moaning his name?

"So good."

Looking like he'd won the lottery, he started to thrust even more ardently.

When he spilled inside me the second time, I just felt happy and content and madly in love with him. My legs dropped to the mattress as he sprinkled kisses over my shoulder and up my neck, and I decided to chance a kiss on the lips.

"I love you," he muttered into my ear.

"I love you too."

He withdrew with a wiggle of his hips but stayed on top of me, seemingly determined to kiss every inch of skin he could find. I was happy to let him.

"That was amazing," he said, dropping onto his side and trailing his free hand over my ribcage. "It was good for you too?"

"I don't know why we waited so long to do that." Once the words left my lips, I expected some sort of comment about how it had been my idea, but Ron just smiled.

"It was worth the wait." He tickled his fingers up over my breast and pressed his lips to mine. "Mmm, but love?"

"Hmm?" I could taste myself on his tongue but I didn't even mind.

"I love you," he said around a kiss, "more than anything…" Another kiss. "But I am starving now."

"Then let's go."

We dressed quickly, laughing over the way his sweatpants completely covered my feet, and went down to the basement kitchen in search of sustenance. Now that my nerves over all of this had gone, I too was ravenous. Fortunately for us, Ron's mother seemed terrified that he and Harry would starve to death without her cooking and was forever sending them food, so we sat at the kitchen table in our nightclothes and wolfed it all down. A tub of homemade strawberry ice cream, consumed in the drawing room, was soon to follow. Once we were packed to the gills, Ron laid down with his head in my lap, smirking up at me.

"So you really liked it, huh?" There was no hesitance in his question anymore. "The second time?"

"I liked both times," I told him honestly. "It was just better the second time because I wasn't nervous. And the first time I really wanted to kiss you but I wasn't sure if I could-"

"You should have done," he said fervently. "I really could have used it, I was freaking out a bit thinking you hated it."

"You just seemed like you were really concentrating."

"I was," he chuckled, sitting up. "So do you feel different? Like you thought you might?"

"Actually, a bit..." We'd done something that I had thought would be huge and groundbreaking, and in some ways it was. It was nothing I took lightly, going down with path with him. But at the same time, despite the awkwardness and discomfort, it had also felt so right to be so close and connected to him. It was just another step forward in our life together, and I was thankful that we finally took it. "But in a good way."

* * *

 _Well, there you have it! Thank you a thousand times over for reading and reviewing and sharing your thoughts! I genuinely hope you enjoyed this little story and if you did (or hell, even if you hated it), please review! Thanks again loves!_


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